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David O. Wilkinson

The study of comparative civilization raises a variety of questions; for example, how “civilization” is related to “culture,” what criteria shall be used to distinguish one civilization ...
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The study of comparative civilization raises a variety of questions; for example, how “civilization” is related to “culture,” what criteria shall be used to distinguish one civilization from another, or whether the past of civilizations can tell us anything about the future of our global civilization. One way to approach these elements of the comparative-civilizational problematique is by analyzing the successive theses of notable workers in the field, from Herodotus of Halicarnassus and Marco Polo to Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, Ibn Khaldun, Giambattista Vico, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The works of Hegel and four other scholars—Nikolai Danilevsky, Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, and Pitirim Sorokin—are considered classics in the study of macrosocial systems. More recent studies of macrosocial systems that deserve consideration are those by André Gunder Frank and Barry Gills; Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall; Carroll Quigley; Matthew Melko; and Samuel P. Huntington. The “civilizations” and “world-systems” approaches to macrosocieties are both strongly concerned to explain political conditions like hegemony and rivalry, general war, and general peace. Thus, it would be useful to concentrate on the political–military–diplomatic foci of both approaches. A key to making comparative-civilizational research more systematic is to identify the spatio-temporal boundaries of civilizations as complex systems with particular locations in space and time.

Jeannette Money

The research on comparative immigration policy is relatively recent, with the earliest dealing with significant immigrant inflows into Western Europe after World War II. Because of the ...
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The research on comparative immigration policy is relatively recent, with the earliest dealing with significant immigrant inflows into Western Europe after World War II. Because of the difficulties in finding empirically grounded measures of immigration policy, the literature has grown primarily by adding to the theoretical literature. In terms of the immigration control literature, nativism (anti-immigrant preferences) has been complemented by approaches that include attention to the economic consequences of immigration, focus on how societal preferences are channeled, and focus on state national interest and state security. In terms of the immigrant integration literature, there has been a tendency to classify the immigrant reception environment of states according to historical nation building features of the state and to types of “immigration regimes.” More recently, in recognition of the static nature of these models of policy making, scholars have disaggregated integration policy into its component parts and incorporated aspects of politics that change over time. The research arena is, in short, theoretically rich, though both dimensions of research on immigration policy suffer from two flaws. The first is the inability to compare effectively policies across countries. The second is the research focus on Western Europe and advanced industrial countries, to the neglect of the remaining countries in the world.

Stephen J. Larin

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the term “ethnic” has come to mean “member of a group of people with a set of shared characteristics,” including a belief in common descent. As such, ...
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Since the mid-nineteenth century, the term “ethnic” has come to mean “member of a group of people with a set of shared characteristics,” including a belief in common descent. As such, “ethnic groups” refer to human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical or customs type or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration. Ethnic phenomena are primarily explained through the “primordialist” and “instrumentalist” explanations. Primordialism holds that ethnicity is a constitutive and permanent feature of human nature. Instrumentalists argue that ethnicity is a social construct with the purpose of achieving political or material gain. However, the real debate is among constructivists over whether ethnicity should be studied from the participant or the observer perspective. Meanwhile, it is difficult to determine exactly when and where “the nation” first became identified with “the people” as it is today, but the process is closely tied to the rise of popular sovereignty and representative democracy. When nations and nationalism became the subject of academic inquiry, three positions emerged: “modernism,” which holds that both nations and nationalism are modern phenomena; “perennialism,” which argues that nationalist ideology is modern, but nations date back to at least the Middle Ages; and “ethno-symbolism,” a combination of the previous two. Most contemporary classifications of nations and nationalism are typological, the most prominent of which identify two dichotomous types, such as the distinction between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism. Other classifications are better described as taxonomies.

Andrea Grove

There are several conceptions of culture which have become dominant in foreign policy analysis (FPA) in particular: culture as the organization of meaning, culture as value preferences, ...
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There are several conceptions of culture which have become dominant in foreign policy analysis (FPA) in particular: culture as the organization of meaning, culture as value preferences, and culture as templates for human strategy. Prior to the 1990s, the Cold War constraints of bipolarity had left little room for idiosyncratic domestic-level variables such as culture to affect FP. However, once systemic constraints lessened and the decision making milieu became more ambiguous, scholars increasingly turned to questions about culture and identity. Using classic frameworks as a jumping off point, early work on national role conception and operational code analysis incorporated culture as a significant filter for decision making. Operational code analysis is another early approach that had elements of culture as part of the decision making context. In addition, there are a few works that investigate culture and FP with a different focus than FPA. But perhaps one of the most notable elements of FPA studies exploring culture is the idea that it need not be viewed as explaining whatever cannot be explained by anything else. Instead of merely an alternative theoretical explanation of state behavior, use of culture in the post-Cold War revival and today reflects an effort not so much to refute neorealism but to look at different questions.

André Lecours

Social science scholars have repeatedly predicted the demise of regional (or peripheral) nationalism, from the late nineteenth century to the post-World War II period and in the 1990s. ...
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Social science scholars have repeatedly predicted the demise of regional (or peripheral) nationalism, from the late nineteenth century to the post-World War II period and in the 1990s. However, all suggestions about the death of regional nationalism have been proven wrong. On the contrary, nationalist movements in the West have not only survived advanced capitalist development in liberal democratic contexts but have thrived as well. In the developing world, decolonization gave rise to a variety of regional nationalist movements that frequently spiraled into violent conflict and secessionist attempts. To deal with regional nationalism, states often turned to devolution, resulting in the implementation of various schemes of autonomy, most of which came under the guise of federalism. Three trends characterize the literature on regional nationalism and its management through devolution: a change in the way regional nationalism is viewed; a transformation in the type of political, institutional, and constitutional response scholars have suggested toward regional nationalism; and a willingness to accept, or even favor, secession as a possible solution to conflict in multinational and/or multiethnic countries. At the same time, there are at least two challenges in the study of regional nationalism and its management: objectivity and the need to develop a greater comparative perspective.

Willem Maas

Ethnicity and nationalism, interethnic conflicts, and human migration have been major forces shaping the modern world and the structure and stability of contemporary states. A notable ...
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Ethnicity and nationalism, interethnic conflicts, and human migration have been major forces shaping the modern world and the structure and stability of contemporary states. A notable reason for the current academic interest in ethnicity and nationalism is the fact that such phenomena have become so visible in many societies that it has become impossible to ignore them. In the early twentieth century, many social theorists claimed that ethnicity and nationalism would decrease in importance and eventually vanish as a result of modernization, industrialization, and individualism, but this never came about. Instead, ethnicity and nationalism have grown in political importance in the world, particularly since the Second World War. It is important to note that ethnicity and nationalism are social and political constructions, as well as modern phenomena that are inseparably connected with the activities of the modern centralizing state. One characteristic of a modern state is the presence of population diversity brought about by migration. Human migration can be defined as the movement by people from one place to another with the intentions of settling permanently in the new location. One of the reasons why immigrants choose to migrate to another country is because globalization has increased the demand for workers from other countries in order to sustain national economies. Known as “economic migrants,” these individuals are generally from impoverished developing countries—usually people of color—migrating to obtain sufficient income for survival.

Landon E. Hancock

Ethnicity and identity are largely about boundaries; in fact, there is no way to determine one’s identity—ethnic or otherwise—without reference to some sort of boundary. In approaching the ...
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Ethnicity and identity are largely about boundaries; in fact, there is no way to determine one’s identity—ethnic or otherwise—without reference to some sort of boundary. In approaching the study of ethnicity and identity, sociology, anthropology, and to a lesser extent political science and international relations tend to focus on the group level and define ethnicity and ethnic identity as group phenomena. Psychology, by contrast, focuses on the individual level. These two disciplinary areas represent the opposite ends of a conceptual focus in examining both ethnicity as a group phenomenon and identity as an individual phenomenon, with a “middle ground” outlined by symbolic interactionism focusing on the processes of formation and reformation through the interaction of individuals and groups. The thread that runs through each of these ordinarily disparate disciplines is that, when examining ethnicity or identity, there is a common factor of dialectic between the sameness of the self or in-group and differentiation with the other or out-group. Moreover, an examination of the manner in which the generation of identity at one level has an explicit connection to the germination of identity at other levels of analysis shows that they combine together in a process of identification and categorization, with explicit links between the self and other at each level of analysis.

Jason Sorens

For some time, scholars have noticed that ethnic groups that are geographically concentrated or possess a “regional base” tend to become embroiled in anti-state rebellion at a much higher ...
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For some time, scholars have noticed that ethnic groups that are geographically concentrated or possess a “regional base” tend to become embroiled in anti-state rebellion at a much higher rate than other ethnic groups. Countries with higher numbers of geographically concentrated ethnic minorities and self-determination movements tend to see more internal violence. Furthermore, if popular demands for independence exist, they may or may not reach serious political expression, and that expression may take various forms, from electoral action to protest or outright rebellion. The form of expression depends on institutional constraints and various factors that generate reasons for conflict; however, not all attempts at secession are done with violence. Many secessionist organizations have in fact refrained from violence, and some governments permit secessionists to organize, to contest elections, and even to pursue independence through the political process. Recently, scholarship has begun to move away from the determinants of popular demands for sovereignty to the dynamics of secessionist mobilization, including collective protest and rebellion. This research sees the struggle between nationalists and the state in the context of game theory, particularly deterrence models, and generally stresses concepts such as capability, information, and credibility. Secessionism overall remains a research frontier in both comparative politics and international relations.

Mehmet Sinan Birdal and Josephine Squires

International relations theory has much to gain from studying ethnicity, nationalism, and colonialism. Research on nationalism has produced important theoretical contributions to ...
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International relations theory has much to gain from studying ethnicity, nationalism, and colonialism. Research on nationalism has produced important theoretical contributions to constructivist approaches in international relations. Similarly, postcolonial theory can contribute to international relations theory by exploring aspects of identity construction that are neglected in studies with exclusive focus on Western states. For example, postcolonial theory can be used in the study of ethnic conflict by combining both aspects of identity construction and strategizing, and how research on ethnicity and nationalism and postcolonial studies can benefit from closer dialogue. Moreover, postcolonial studies raise important epistemological and normative questions that need to be taken seriously by international relations scholars. Postcolonial and subaltern studies question the knowledge claims made by area studies by criticizing their representational strategies of colonialism and the postcolonial situation. They pose a challenge for international relations as a discipline by questioning the knowledge–power nexus. They assert that the presumably “scientific” accounts of the non-West carry the ideological baggage of colonialism. What is needed therefore is to account first for the historical representation of the non-West in Western scientific discourse and produce a critique of this knowledge system as a legitimating and administrative discourse in the service of colonialism.

Eunice Y. Kang, Hyung-Gu Lynn, and Apichai W. Shipper

East Asian countries have varying levels of ethnic homogeneity. North and South Korea have long been considered among the most ethnically homogeneous nation-states in the world. In South ...
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East Asian countries have varying levels of ethnic homogeneity. North and South Korea have long been considered among the most ethnically homogeneous nation-states in the world. In South Korea, the number of foreigners who were long-term visitors (over 90 days) or residents accounted for 1.3 percent of the total population in 2006. While no equivalent statistics are available for North Korea, given the data available, it seems safe to assume that the ethnic minority population in that country totals less than 1 percent. The Japanese also view themselves as a racially distinct and homogeneous people, despite the historical presence of foreigners and ethnic minorities. China is composed of a patchwork of ethnicities with around 55 state-recognized minority groups. However, according to the 2005 census, minorities accounted for only 9.4 percent of the overall population or 123 million people. Despite different levels of ethnic homogeneity, China, Korea, and Japan are witnessing a rise in international (and internal) migration over the past three decades. The recent increase of foreign migrant workers and spouses has challenged the dominant perceptions of ethnic homogeneity in Korea and Japan, while further strengthening the bonds of ethnic heterogeneity in China. These changes have not only forced a reshaping of the notions of identity and citizenship, but have also helped fuel the rise of various “reactive” forms of neo-nationalism, such as “state nationalism,” “ethnic nationalism,” and “cultural nationalism,” that attempt to fortify or recuperate ethnic or race-based definitions of national identity.

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